


never mistake what it is for what it looks like

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [37]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Collegestuck, F/F, Genderqueer Character, Humanstuck, Misgendering, Multi, Racism, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:53:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6805354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The same way it has expectations about everything else, the world has certain expectations about love. A line drawn between two points. Balance. But you’ve seen enough of people trying to force themselves into a mold, failing, and blaming themselves, when it’s not they who need to change, it’s the world around them. It's almost always the world around them, you reflect, once you attend the last Honor Society dinner of your college career. Your name is Porrim Maryam, and you're counting down days until your college graduation, because you grow weary of keeping up your facade.</p><p>You are sick and tired of respectability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never mistake what it is for what it looks like

_**Spring 2011 - Porrim Maryam** _

Another semester, another light dinner in Roosevelt Hall for all the members of the National Honor Society.

You don’t _technically_ have to show up to these gatherings, but your advisor strongly recommended that you attend the first time you asked if you could take the evening off to study for Orgo II.

Which basically makes them mandatory for all intents and purposes.

Aside from the expected array of students who have been blessed by the GPA gods, there are always many well-connected alumni looking for undergrads to recruit into unpaid internships, along with representatives from various schools extolling the virtues of their graduate programs.

God, you hate these events, their tedium, and everyone’s pretension.

You lose sight of Kankri early on, which kind of sucks. Loquacious as he can be, he is your best friend. You count on your fingers how many of your friends are likely to be in attendance. Latula, Mituna, Rufioh, Kankri, and Aranea, the latter of whom you are trying to avoid at all costs.

Maybe it’s because you dated her in the past and were subjected to the full force of her manipulative tendencies, but a polite smile and poor attempts at small talk are all you can muster when you’re forced to interact with her.

It’s so strange walking amongst these older people and being treated with a modicum of respect.

While you may only be twenty, the fact that you’re a student nurse - scrubs, stethoscope, penlight, and all - makes you a bonafide adult. You aren’t in your hospital attire tonight, obviously, but the name tag they gave you has your major printed beneath it: nursing.

With it, you have been granted immunity to most recruitment. Your future is already set.

When you were younger, you longed to be taken seriously as a human being, for someone to notice your sophistication and ability to articulate your thoughts, relative to your classmates, at any rate. Your desperate attempts to get Mr. Vandayar to see you as more than just another student in his APUSH class can attest to that, much as you’d like to pretend they never happened.

(Perhaps you hallucinated your 11th grade infatuation. Unlikely, since it’s been five years and none of your friends have let you live it down.)

But because the cogs of life are greased by irony, now that you are in a position to be taken seriously, by both your peers and people with actual clout, you sort of want to go back to the high school way of doing things.

Back then, you could call one of your classmates a bigoted fucking moron without censure, unless a dean happened to be nearby. Now, you have to smile and nod, even as others go on about how police need more resources (read: a greater ability to use their guns without restriction) in order to protect and serve the population.

You remind yourself of the mantra you reserve for these events. Be respectable, Porrim. Wear long sleeves at all times, lest any of your tattoos show. Remove your piercings beforehand. Take care to ensure that the hemline of your dress is conservative. Do not offer your opinion unless asked. On the off chance someone wishes to know what you think, act like an echo chamber. People seldom care about what you have to say as much as they want to hear their own viewpoints regurgitated.

Water glass in hand, you observe the conversation taking place beside you. Two white students, neither of whom can be much older than you, discuss the current state of law enforcement.

“Do you remember what Bed-Stuy was like under Dinkins?” Person one asks person two.

“Of course! How could I forget?”

Considering this person was likely a toddler at the time, the answer is: quite easily.

“Exactly what I’m saying,” person one replies. “Stop and Frisk is the only thing keeping this city decent. Repeal it and it’ll be the 90s all over again. Junkies and thugs everywhere.”

You clench your fists, bite your tongue, and make for the table containing the hors d'oeuvres.

Mituna has to be around here somewhere since hir medication gives hir the constant munchies, and at any rate, ze’ll probably be disappointed with you if you don’t make the attempt to eat something while you’re here.

 _(But what about the calories, Porrim? They’ll go straight to your stomach and thighs. Don’t you want to be attractive? Don’t you want to be like the ruler thin models you used to work in Trash and Vaudeville with?_ )

You inhale slowly, and soundly tell your disorder to jam a sock in it.

From across the room, amid a bevy of pre-law students vying for an internship at an attorney’s office, Latula grins at you. Finally, someone you know. You return the gesture with a nod, and probably your first genuine smile for the evening.

You could live forever and never love her less.

You spoon a bit of salad, and one of those odd dough-wrapped hot dog things onto your plate. You scarf everything down as quickly as propriety will allow. Maybe if you don’t chew too much, your mind will stop arguing with you.

You contemplate finding another group of students to converse with in order to save face, but then your phone pings.

TA: 1F 1 H4D 4 FUCK3N D0LL4R F0R 3V3RY 71M3 1V3 833N C4LL3D MR C4P70R 7W0D4Y 1 C0ULD 8U1LD 4 FUCK3N C457L3.

So Mituna is around, then. Where, you have no idea.

You dash off a quick reply to hir message.

GA: Do+ I need to+ kill anyo+ne to+night?  
GA: I should have wo+rn my stiletto+s in retro+spect, they’d be a much better murder weapo+n than wedges.  
TA: N03P DW41  
TA: 7UL4 V0LUN733R3D F1R57 4NYW4Y 50 G37 UR W3LL 70N3D 455 1N L1N3 TA: 51D35  
TA: RUF10 5NUCK 1N 4 8077L3 0F 570L1 50 1 D0N7 RLY G1V3 4 5H17 4NYM0R3

If you were a freshman, you might have been surprised at the way Rufioh comports himself at these events, at his attempts to “liven things up”.

Now, three years down the line, you’re almost thankful that someone took the initiative to bring a handle of vodka. Kurloz and Damara would have probably done something similar, but they weren’t invited.

And it’s not like there are any alcoholic beverages to be found here ordinarily, given that most of the students in the honors program are under 21. Including you, technically. You can’t help it if you skipped a grade way back when.

GA: Where even are yo+u two+?  
GA: I haven’t seen either o+f yo+u all night  
TA: 7H4 U5U4L 5P07  
GA: Rufio+h’s do+rm ro+o+m?  
TA: N00000000  
TA: 7H3 81G 455 574LL Y0U KN0W WH3R3  
TA: C0M3 0V3R  
TA: 175 N07 RLY 4 P4R7Y W17H 0NLY 7W0 P30PL3

You find a relatively quiet area, lean back against a wall, and text Latula again.

GA: Apparently, Tuna and Rufio+h gave up o+n to+night’s assembly and decided to drink themselves stupid in the bathro+o+m instead o+f do+ing anything else.  
GA: I do+n’t kno+w if yo+u’re still talking to+ the rep fro+m that law firm.

GA: Best o+f luck either way, Latula. Yo+u deserve that internship mo+re than anyo+ne I kno+w.

She does, too, and you’re not saying this because you’re biased.

Perhaps she wasn’t the best student in high school transcript-wise, but the minute college hit, she started pulling her own weight and more besides. Even despite her difficulties staying on task, she’s the best writer you know, able to phrase her arguments with a sort of concision that would have never occurred to you or anyone else for that matter.

You watched her decimate her opponents in high school debate, the only time she really seemed to use her full capabilities. When debaters were selected to compete in the Tournament of Champions, Latula was barely surprised to find her name on the list.

You, Kankri, and Mituna high-fived her.

“Time to kick ass and take names,” she remarked.

Frankly, you’re in awe of everything she’s managed to accomplish, both in school and out of school. And even if she didn’t possess such a keen mind, you’d adore her anyway. She is Latula Pyrope, she can skateboard faster than most express buses, and she makes you embarrassingly weak-kneed sometimes, just by the way she says your name.

Her, Meenah, and Mituna, much to your occasional constenation.

You take your phone back out, check for new messages, and find none, which isn’t surprising. You hope everything is going well for her. You glance a final time around the room, confirm that nothing important or even vaguely interesting is going on here, and start walking toward the TH building.

You scan in and make a beeline for the furthest bathroom on the fourth floor, realizing that you’ve hit paydirt the moment you open the door. Voices issue from the handicapped stall, which has been broken since you were a freshman, and happens to be large enough to fit several people.

“…yeah but if the horse dong in the closet freaks you out, just tell ‘im that it freaks you out, yo.”

“I think it’s a gag gift Kurloz gave him,” Rufioh replies. “And he still hasn’t found out a way to get rid of it.”

“Nigg–… son, please. All he gotta do is throw that shit in the trash if he doesn’t want it.”

You mentally award Mituna points for catching hirself mid-sentence.

Even if ze was raised in East New York, spending most of hir childhood at the basketball court near Broadway Junction until the other kids learned to ignore hir skin color and let hir play without objection, even if Meenah awarded hir the honorary title of “being way blacker than Kankri”, ze will never be such.

Ze will never experience the slurs that you and yours do by virtue of your complexion.

Their dialogue continues, interrupting your contemplation.

“I can’t help but think it’d look a little suspect in his garbage can,” Rufioh says.

“Yeah, so that’s when he picks an asshole neighbor and puts it in theirs. Then, the garbage men come to collect, and whatshisface is like, _ayo son, why dontcha take a seat over there?”_

Classic Tuna logic. You’re in danger of revealing your presence by laughing yourself silly.

You tip-toe over to the door of the stall and rap it with your knuckles, causing the occupants to lose their shit.

“Shit!” Mituna exclaims. “Quick! Everything away!”

You hear the metallic sound of one of them screwing the cap back on the bottle, and the rustle of a backpack. It’s probably the best to clarify the situation now, before either of them has a heart attack.

“It’s just me,” you tell them. “Unlock the door, wouldja?”

Rufioh sighs. “Oh, thank God.”

The latch clicks, the door opens an inch or so, and Mituna’s brown eye peers out of the gap. It’s hard to miss how scarlet hir cheeks have gone. Ze breaks into a relieved smile.

“Get in here before we get kicked outta school or some shit."

You oblige and shut the door behind you, being careful not to trip over Mituna’s pumps, which ze evidently abandoned as soon as ze came in here. You don’t blame hir. They’re a normal height for you, which must make them downright uncomfortable in hir case.

“Feels like there’s fuckin’ roof tiles strapped to my feet,” Ze grumbled, the first time ze wore them.

In retrospect, you’ll never understand why a handicapped bathroom stall requires both a nearby window and a radiator, but it has served its purpose well during your college career - as the designated place where people go to do shady things. You cannot count on both hands the number of times Mituna has rolled blunts on this radiator.

“Where’s Latula,” ze wants to know. You shrug.

“Still angling for an internship.”

Mituna gives a wide grin, showing off all hir orthodontic work.

“She’ll get it,” Ze says. “She mad qualified.”

A look around the stall tells you that Rufioh was actually prepared for the evening’s excursion. Aside from the rather formidable bottle of vodka, he brought a few empty cups from the cafeteria, and a bottle of cranberry juice to serve as a mixer.

Ever the proper host, he mixes you a drink before you have to ask, hands it to you, and raises his own cup.

“To Latula.”

You, he, and Mituna clink your plastic cups together.

Once the toast is concluded, Rufioh and Mituna resume their previous discussion about the contents of Horuss’s bedroom closet.

“He, uh,” Rufioh begins. “He has _implements._ ”

Mituna snorts. “We kinda figured when you mentioned the silicone horse dong.”

“ _Other_ implements.”

As a person who worked in a sex shop and dabbled in pro-domming, now you’re interested. You pour yourself another drink, and put your chin in your hands, gazing at Rufioh expectantly.

“Wanna be specific?” you ask. “You don’t have to, of course, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Mituna needs a minute to compose hirself before saying, “ _I_   want him to be specific.”

You aim a kick at hir.

“If he’s got a violet wand, I’ll fuck him myself,” you mutter under your breath, although apparently not quietly enough to escape Rufioh’s notice.

“What’s a violet wand?” He asks.

Oh, this sweet summer child. He goes on about the other things in Horuss’s closet of destiny, and you are personally affronted that you never witnessed them firsthand. You chug your drink with frat boy alacrity and request another, particularly since you actually did have sex with Horuss in sophomore year, after an ill-fated game of “Never Have I Ever”.

_(Problem was, you’d done everything.)_

“He has rope in there too,” Rufioh adds. “I’m not sure for what, though.”

“Either he’s going spelunking in his own house or he likes tying people up,” Mituna says.

Even Rufioh has to laugh at that, nervously, but a genuine laugh just the same. Mituna claps him on the back.

“So. Ever been tied up?”

Rufioh stares at him like ze’s asked him if he’s ever jumped out of an airplane without a parachute.

“It can be an exceedingly pleasurable experience, being immobilized,” you say fairly. “Provided those involved consent, you start small, you have emergency scissors, and that everyone checks in with each other frequently.”

Mituna snorts. “Thus spake the rope bunny.”

“Rope bunny?” Rufioh asks.

“She likes being tied up almost as much as she likes talking about being tied up.”You sock Mituna in the arm for that one.

Rufioh goes on about Horuss’s closet, while you and Mituna run the obligatory irreverent commentary. Rufioh talks about the flogger and cane he saw, and wonders what the former is used for.

“Did I ever tell you the time Tula broke a cane on my ass?” Ze asks. “It was a fuckin accident, and the cane was a cheap piece of shit, so…”

No, ze did not. You laugh until your eyes water. That’s when Rufioh excuses himself to actually use the bathroom, and leaves the stall.

“Think we broke him?” Mituna asks seriously.

“It would be a crying shame if you did.”

You lean against the radiator, shimmy until you’re sitting atop it, and rest your head on Mituna’s shoulder. Ze doesn’t seem to mind in the least, throwing an arm around your waist, and letting one of hir hands creep up your thigh.

Of course, that would be the moment Rufioh would choose to make his return.

You tug the hemline of your dress down, and Mituna pulls hir stockings back up. Or tries, to anyway, and nearly tips over in the process.

Rufioh glances between the pair of you uncomfortably.

Right. He’s not a voyeur.

However, he isn’t looking at your semi-public display of affection so much as one of your hands. One of your hands that is not anywhere on Mituna’s person at the moment.

You’re about to ask what the problem is, and to apologize profusely, until you follow his line of sight straight to the ring Meenah gave you in 11th grade when you started dating.

That’s right, they’re friends. Been friends ever since the incident with Damara.

So he must think…

Oh great, you groan mentally.

You aren’t blunt enough to inform him that Meenah is perfectly aware of this arrangement. And Rufioh, for all his good qualities, is terrible at initiating any sort of confrontation. You almost wish he would, so you could explain and clear the air.

Yes, you’re dating Meenah, and have steadily been doing so for nigh-on five years now. Yes, you are also the third point in a triad that includes Latula and Mituna. There’s no subterfuge involved, no sneaking around, and you’ve supported Meenah through the same open sort of relationship.

You may not particularly care for Aranea, but you are willing to trust Meenah’s judgment.

And it’s not as if you owe Rufioh the details of your love life, since you’re not having sex with him. Not currently, anyway.

You drink liberally from your cup to avoid speaking, and thankfully, Mituna raises another conversational topic.

“So what’d I miss across the street?” Ze wants to know. “Did Kankri ask anyone to tag their triggers before speaking?

“Actually, I lost him an hour in. What about you?”

The smile melts off Mituna’s face.

“I got offered a research position in a lab up at Columbia, y’know,” Ze says. “A lot of them wouldn’t shut up about how much promise and innovation Mr. Captor shows.”

Rufioh makes to congratulate Mituna, and you give the former a significant look before he can anything. Hair concealing hir eyes, as always, Mituna seems to peer into hir cup of vodka and cranberry, mouth tightening all the while.

“Mr. Captor, ‘cause that’s what my nametag said,” Ze says, gesturing to the gold dress you bought hir from Queens Mall, the one ze’s wearing right now, with a belt and stockings that almost certainly came from your wardrobe. “Guess they think I have this on for shits and giggles.”

Understanding now, Rufioh seems genuinely upset about this situation. “Well, couldn’t you go to the registrar and take steps to change the marker on your identif–”

“Yeah,” Mituna responds with such vehemence that some of hir drink sloshes onto the tile floor. “To female from male, with a supporting note from my psychiatrist. But there’s nothing if I don’t want hormones and there’s less than nothing if I’m not neither gender. Trust me, I checked.

Anyways, I’m about to graduate, so who gives a shit?”

Ze runs hir hands up and down hir nylon stockings in a motion you recognize as a grounding technique. One you taught hir and Callie a while back.

 _Present moment. Present day. Present time._ While ze focuses on the here and now, you consider the past.

_(Once, as you and Latula lay side by side on her bed, naked from the waist up, she told you how often she wished you were around when she was stuck witnessing arguments between friends._

_“You always know what to say, Pornstar,” she grinned, drumming her fingers down your ribs, your too-apparent ribs, as if she found them attractive despite their unseemly clarity. “You always know how to smooth everything out, calm everyone down.”)_

She gave you too much credit, then, when you were seventeen. She gives you too much credit now, years later.

You gaze up, chewing on your lip.

Rufioh says nothing.

You say nothing.

You do, however, pluck Mituna’s drink from hir hand. Last call for your roommate. Ze makes grabby hands to retrieve it, you block the gesture, and kiss each one of hir knuckles in turn.

Then, you lean closer and kiss hir on the mouth. Your mouth drifts back down to hir wrists, your fingers pulling the fabric of hir sleeves back to expose too-straight scars both new and old, but not before you make a minor assessment.

From Rufioh’s vantage point, all he could see would be your insistence on kissing up the inside of Mituna’s forearm, and that’s the way you plan to keep it. You feel Mituna shudder momentarily, but ze does not pull away, most likely having arrived at the same conclusion as you.

If anything, ze draws closer, muscles relaxing by an infinitesimal degree. You push hir bangs aside, plant one more kiss between hir eyebrows - the ones Latula plucked yesterday - before speaking.

“So then fuck Columbia and their bullshit,” you tell Mituna, hoping you sound more confident than you feel. “Just stick around here for grad school and research. Either way you’ll get a Master’s degree, and it’s probably cheaper at a city college.”

You gaze quickly at Rufioh, who holds the cranberry juice bottle in his hand for lack of anything better to do. He looks so out of place among you two that you want to reassure him, and you will, just not yet.

“You wanted to go to Columbia, Popo.” Mituna points out. “Don’t even front.”

You cannot argue. When you were 16, in 12th grade, that was your dream school. You would have walked through fire for an acceptance letter. But priorities change. An Ivy League name means nothing when you can’t afford the Ivy League tuition.

“And yet, here I am,” you reply. “Funny how things work out in the end.”

Then, the bathroom door slams open. Mituna flattens hirself against the wall, the color drains from Rufioh’s face, and you clutch your drink helplessly.

The gravy train has finally derailed.

Your college’s public safety team has obviously arrived, and once they catch wind of the miasma of alcohol, they’ll expel all of you en masse.

Then, you look down, notice the teal stilettos clicking against the tile, and let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. You don’t have to ask who it is before you open the door. Mituna lets out a _“hell yeah!”_  of joy.

And there Latula stands, seemingly ready to strangle someone.

Closing the door behind her, Mituna goes dead silent, reluctant to ask Latula how her evening is going. Her face says nothing and everything all at once. The quivering chin. The flared nostrils. The aquamarine eyes that have gone suspiciously liquid.

Rufioh opens his mouth and closes it again.

In two short strides, she closes the distance between her, you and Mituna. One of your arms comes up to encircle Latula’s shoulders, and one of Mituna’s hands ends up on her waist. The pair of you wait for her to say something, to no avail.

“Latula?” Mituna asks.

She shakes you two off, backs into the far corner of the stall, and slides down to a sitting position on the floor.

Rufioh - the closest - reaches out a tentative hand toward her until the fury in her glare sends him shrinking back. A few tears work their way down her cheek, taking a bit of her eyeliner with it.

She opens her mouth to speak, and for a moment, the only sound that issues forth is a cross between a croak and a sob. Something about her sorrow seems private. Neither you nor Mituna attempt to move nearer, much as you’d like to.

“Latula,” you repeat. “What happened?”

Her eyes flick briefly up to you, then back down to the tile.

She covers her eyes with one hand, and hugs her knees with the other. The nail on one of her index fingers snags her stockings, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She just shakes her head.

 _“He trabajado tan duro, y estoy haciendo lo mas que puedo para prepararme para todo,”_ she murmurs to the floor. Rufioh, whom you think is conversational in Spanish, lets his hand quiver toward her shoulder again.

Mituna stands there gently swaying back and forth, fingernails digging nervous furrows into hir palms.

“Latula?” Ze begs. “Tula, please. Please?”

At long last, tears streaming freely from her eyes, Latula gazes at all of you in turn.

She gasps for air, once, twice, thrice, and you’re afraid she’s having a panic attack until she marshals her hysterics down to something milder. But not for long.

“It’s not fair!” She cries, swiping at her eyes, tone gathering fury. _“Mis notas en el examen de leyes temprana y calificaciones total son mucho mas altas.”_

The same way you unconsciously slip into Akan when English can’t contain your feelings is the same way she lapses into Spanish. But you don’t understand the latter, you didn’t even take it in high school, instead opting for French, so you’re useless here.

 _“Lo siento mucho,”_ Rufioh tells her.

Latula turns to him and laughs, sour as lemon.

She takes her portfolio, the one full of all her best work, her CV, all the recommendations from her professors, and copies of her LSAT scores and hurls it at the opposite wall, papers flying helter-skelter once it collides.

Without thought, you kneel on the floor and crawl over to her, to cradle her head in your arms, to kiss the tears on her cheeks.

After several tense moments, Latula gives you a weak smile and bops you on the nose with her index finger. Mituna nods at you and starts re-gathering all the papers, returning them to their transparent sleeves with a careful hand you’ve never seen hir exhibit toward hir own possessions.

She makes to kick it around the room further, but the ball of her foot catches the alcohol Mituna spilled earlier, and sends her slipping back down to a sitting position. She swears loudly.

“I knew I was fucked the minute this one dude started talking,” Latula goes on. “The interviewer went to law school with that kid’s father. I never stood a chance. Not unless they needed to make a quota or something.”

Mituna shakes hir head.

“Fuck this shit, deadass.”

You nod. 

Eventually, Latula asks Mituna how hir evening went, and more than a little sadly, you recognize in her tone one of your favorite defense mechanisms. Deflection.

“Got called Mr. Captor by those Columbia reps, yo,” Ze replies. Ze removes hir name tag and shreds it to pieces. “Then I found this guy and we decided to get the fuck outta there.”

Ze nods at Rufioh with a grin. “Thanks, by the way.”

“No problem,” Rufioh says.

Things become calmer then, Latula’s scowl, and Mituna’s faint sadness aside. Nobody’s throwing anything, at least.

And, to the collective amusement of everyone present, Latula details the painfully obvious ways in which Kankri attempted to suck up to everyone with any influence whatsoever. Rufioh regales her with the story of Horuss’s closet of horrors. Mituna recalls the pompous chick who managed to screw up discussing the first law of thermodynamics while talking to a representative from Duke University.

Ze then returns Latula’s accordion folder to her bag.

You pour yourself and drink, another cup of cranberry juice, augmenting it with a splash of vodka.

Eventually, you will have to go home, and you’d like to be tipsy by then.

Gesturing with your free hand, you ask your friends, “So what’s the plan for tonight?”

“Whatever you want it to be,” Latula says. Mituna makes vigorous pelvic thrusting motions behind her.

You roll your eyes at these two.

Then, you text Callie and Kurloz, asking them to spend the night outside of apartment 3B. Callie can go to Roxy’s, and Kurloz can either spend the night with Damara or smoke weed in Union Square until 9 am.

It’s been a long fucking evening. Kurloz texts you back about a minute later.

TC: I want motherfuckin details later ;o)  
GA: Yo+u are creepy as hell, do+n't let anyo+ne tell yo+u o+therwise.

“I guess you could come over too, Rufioh,” Latula begins, “but, uh, I don’t know if you’d want to be part of the proceedings.”

Rufioh goes the same shade of red as the cranberry juice he bought, bids all of you good night, and exits the bathroom like the place has caught fire.

You’ll never understand how he and Horuss started dating.

“Gonna have the place all to ourselves,” Mituna grins, eyebrows wiggling. “All night long.”

At any rate, maybe some intimacy will quell the fire flaring in your chest, or at least distract you. You’re pissed off, and you don’t even want to pretend otherwise, since it’s not something that’ll go away with time.

In fact, age and knowledge have made it worse.

This is a resentment that you’ve carried since you were old enough to understand the way the world worked. The way it separated people, and the fact that this is exactly how it was meant to function by the powers that be.

White. Nonwhite. Rich. Poor. Male. Female. Straight. Gay. Cis. Trans.

The world will classify you as it sees fit, and certain lines cannot be crossed except under special circumstances.

To pass for an easier fate is to walk a tightrope, to run a marathon and pray the truth doesn’t catch up with you.

You think of your sister’s girlfriend and her fair skin, the way she goes by “Rose” as opposed to “Rosario”. You don’t blame her. You never will.

People do what they must to survive.

You’ve adopted radical stances, became a butterfly beating your wings against a glass jar that would never yield. You and many of your friends.

You’re unsure what the worse outcome is: continuing to resist despite slim odds, or accepting things as they are.

You were sure when you were sixteen.

You’re not anymore.

You can carry your signs, your rainbow flags, raise your skinny fist against the powers that be, and  _always_

_always_

come up short.

You’ll receive fewer opportunities compared to less qualified people with better connections. You'll start out lowest of the low on the totem pole.

You’ll insist on your identity and watch as people disrespect it anyway, as they deny your personhood because they can. Not unless you have the proper documentation, and maybe not even then.

Mituna and Latula walk on either side of you as you three make your way to the train station.

Invariably, one of them is going to ask you what’s wrong. You have not yet vented tonight.

You haven’t even seemed particularly annoyed.

You have no reason to vent, other than the usual ones.

You think of the placement you got for the bulk of your nursing rotations, somewhere other students all-but-refused out of fear and ignorance. Shit rolls downhill, and you just happened to be next in line. But you nodded meekly and accepted your placement, because s _omeone_ has to treat the people that most of society would rather ignore.

_“I don’t want to work at King’s County with them! All those gunshots, all the stabbings. God, triage alone must be a nightmare.”_

A few of your fellow students thanked you for taking one for the team, along with other words of “praise”, words you’ve been hearing in some shape, form, or fashion since you were a child.

“I hardly see you as black, Porrim! You’re so polite and articulate!”

A compliment by another name to you, the lighter-skinned of your parents' children. An old line from a piece of poetry you had to analyze for an elective class on black literature occurs to you.

 

> "My motto is  
>  _Never mistake what it is for what it looks like."_

So you don't.

 _The classes of my people are electives, and the classes of yours are mandatory,_ you think to the person who gave you such praise.

You sit on the downtown bound train with your box braids obscuring most of your face. Mituna snores loudly and nasally against Latula's shoulder.

Continuing to brood, you remember a message Meenah sent you on Monday, about how her choreographer thought she would look out of place as the principal dancer for the spring show.

Her build wasn’t right for it. Certain moves seemed awkward when she performed them.

You’d gone to as many of her rehearsals as you could make with your schedule, and she was clearly the most skilled of the bunch.

Therefore she knew, and you knew, what the smiling woman in the leotard was saying, eyes roving over the other dancers, all of whom were varying shades of pale.

However, rather than arguing the point, rather than making a complaint, Meenah merely nodded and accepted a place in the ensemble. Let the makeup artists powder her skin up to Latula’s color.

“Fin is, I just wanna glubbin’ graduate,” she confessed to you. “Doesn’t reely make a difference what they do to me.”

Resignation, at last.

From the most confrontational woman you’d ever known.

Four years ago, she would have cursed someone out for such a slight.

_And now? And now?_

You wish she’d bitten the bullet back in freshman year and reapplied to Juilliard, her parents’ objections about the practicality of pursuing a career in dance be damned.

“Perform for me,” you begged her later, when the two of you were alone in her house. “Show me how you would have done things.”

You’d seen her perform before, and had come away each time feeling like you understood her better for it. Beneath her headstrong and oftentimes heedless exterior lay a core of grace, of poise, these traits existing in odd yet steady equilibrium.

Even her warmups held a compelling sort of gravity.

And once she really began, she never dropped out of pointe, making it look positively easy.

Meenah was elegant in a way that you weren’t, in a way that you’d never be, and you loved her for it. She was fluid as the sea, not a breath out of place, and betraying not the slightest hint of stress. As she moved, her eyes were faraway, blank and reflective as marbles.

There was no room. There was no floor. There were no others, not even you. There was music, and there were steps.

Only when she leaned into a long turn, up on one toe, did you realize that something was amiss. Though her face remained expressionless, the rest of her body shook with visible strain.

“Meenah, love?” You asked, trying to get her attention.

But she closed her eyes, inhaled, and leapt high into the air, arms aloft.

You didn’t have the reflexes of a ballet dancer, but you did possess the rapid-fire reaction time of a student ER nurse, and caught her just the same. Your maneuver bore no finesse but still managed to stop her from a potentially dangerous landing.

Porrim to the rescue. Sort of. It was your fault she did it anyway.

“That was supposed to be a pas de deux, actshoally,” she explained, after thanking you. “It still is, but I’m naut the woman performing it anemonemore, since wouldn’t look right with me.”

You wound one of her two long braids around your finger, and touched your forehead to hers. “Their loss, then. I think it looks perfect.”

You did.

You do.

Here, now, in your apartment, Mituna drags you out of your mind by asking you to help hir out of hir dress, which unzips from the back. Latula’s in the kitchen, fixing some kind of actual dinner, which is nice, because you are so tired and angry that you barely want to eat tonight, let alone cook.

You get Mituna to stay as still as possible, and one easy motion later, ze’s down to hir bra and stockings.

Ze strolls out of the bathroom and over to hir pile of clean laundry in the closet. “Lemme find my boxers before I fuckin’ die or something.”

Ze does, and trips over the cat in the process.

Latula serves up leftovers that you’re pretty sure were also leftovers yesterday, spooning an equal amount of rice, beans, and saltfish into three bowls. You dig around in the kitchen cabinet for your and Mituna’s evening meds, careful not to mix them up.

You took Mituna’s risperidone once by accident, and have no desire to repeat the stunt.

“Oh, come on, it’s only ten,” Mituna protests, eyeing hir handful of pills with disdain.

You grab Mituna’s cup so you can take your medication as well.

“Babe, you’re not even gonna fall asleep until one,” Latula points out, swallowing some ibuprofen for her headache. She’s had a headache all night, apparently.

With you and Mituna seated on the futon, she sprawls out across your laps, wearing nothing but her camisole and panties. Business as usual.

Actually, you’re pretty sure those are your panties. You’re too tired to argue the point.

Mituna shakes hir bangs out of hir eyes so ze can perform hir patented eyebrow wiggle. Latula snorts and kisses hir. Then, she raises her head so she can actually eat her dinner.

You sigh, considering the fact that you just washed those sheets yesterday.

“Careful not to get any food on the furniture, you two.”

“This thing’s had way worse on it, Pornstar, and you know it,” Latula responds.

Mituna cackles so hard ze almost chokes.

Latula interrupts you mid eye-roll by putting her bowl down on the floor, and letting her fingers dip just beneath the waistband of your underwear. You disguise your gasp as an inhale, but she doesn’t buy it, and turns so she can kiss you fully, biting down on your lower lip.

“Haven’t done that in a while,” she comments breathlessly, while Mituna attempts to divest her of her top. To hir credit, ze is way better at removing other people’s clothes than hir own.

“I think you did that ah–… um, yesterday?”

“Nah, son, that was all me,” Mituna replies, stifling a yawn.

You gaze properly at Latula, whose eyes are overbright with exhaustion, even as she tries to round the bases with you.

So while you more than likely possess more restraint than both of them combined, you can’t help but giggle uncontrollably at this situation. The more confused they get, the harder you laugh, so eventually you do clarify before they conclude that you’ve completely lost your mind.

“You two look like hell.” Come to think of it, you probably don’t look much better. Your eyebags must have eyebags. “If we keep going like this, one of us is going to fall asleep halfway through.”

Latula shrugs, mutters something about how she’s still perfectly awake now, but does admit that she could use some rest. Mituna, who began to nod off while you were talking, rouses hirself for long enough to agree with whatever Latula said, especially if it has to do with getting laid.

“It had to do with the literal opposite of getting laid,” you tell hir, before bringing hir up to speed with what you’d said.

“You know what we can do instead of sex, then?” Ze asks. “Since we got a free crib and all?”

Considering the fact that you and Mituna pay rent for this place, the “free” part of that statement is debatable.

Latula eats another few spoonfuls of rice before speaking. “What, Tunez?”

“Mutha. Fuckin. Videogames. Maximum volume. Maximum overkill.”

Hir hands shake wildly with excitement, and ze makes quick work of hooking everything up. Ze and Latula offer to let you play, but you’ve never been a video game person. You’re content to watch them play Mariokart and shout terrible things at each other.

While the fight deepens, you phone vibrates, with a response to a message you sent Meenah on the train.

CC: water we doin tomorrow anywaves?  
CC: you never suggested anyfin  
GA: The Bo+tanical Garden, maybe?  
GA: No+thing befo+re 1 pm, Latula and Mituna are go+ing to+ be playing Mario+kart all night.  
CC: ”mariokart” eh  
CC: that some kinda codeword for somefin kinky  
CC: u finna get aquainted with someones joystick   
GA: I will take pictures, Mario+kart is exactly what they are do+ing.   
CC: yall a buncha dorks istg  
CC: free apartment and yall playin vidya games CC: tell tunafish and latula i said hi  
GA: Will do+, when they are no+t busy cursing each o+ther’s respective next seven generatio+ns.

Invariably, they don’t play all night, or even more than an hour.

Mituna conks out halfway through rainbow road, head bent low, letting the controller fall to the floor.

“Guess we should probably get hir to bed,” you tell Latula.

You turn off the Wii. She drapes a blanket over Mituna, and sits down next to hir.

“We should probably get to bed too.”

“You’d tell me anything in order to sleep with me,” you grin.

She winks at you again, gestures to you and your nightie, which is 75% lace and 80% see through.

“Can you blame me?”

You cannot, in all fairness. You get Mituna to move over so the three of you can fit onto the futon. You press a kiss to Latula’s hairline, and curl up against Mituna.

The same way it has expectations about everything else, the world has certain expectations about love. A line drawn between two points. Balance.

But you’ve seen enough of people trying to force themselves into a mold, failing, and blaming themselves, when it’s not they who need changing, it’s the society around them.

Besides, triangles have a symmetry and balance of their own, don’t they?

It’s not as if you’d really care if they didn’t. You’d still be right here.

You've never been known for paying much heed to the rules.

 


End file.
